What about pricing? Is the maintenance pricing Oracle used in the benchmark realistic? And pricing with flash surely makes a huge impact as seen with the outstanding price performance of the recent 8 core IBM POWER7 result which used SSD.(2)

Oracle only relies on claims from this one benchmark using only one type of system. Where are all the Exadata benchmarks, by the way? IBM has leadership across a whole portfolio of benchmarks across a wide expanse of systems.

I am going to a school band concert tonight. Or at least I think I'm going to a school band concert tonight. You see it was supposed to be held on Monday and it was postponed because of the snow. Then it was supposed to be held on Tuesday but it was postponed because of the snow. And because it is now being held tonight when there are also swim meets, music recitals, and holiday parties, it may not get quite the attention that it should.

Which is why I want to make sure that everyone knows about the new IBM Power 780 TPC-H Business Intelligence benchmark result announced yesterday afternoon. Between the IBM Watson Jeopardy! game and Christmas shopping it's no wonder that an important result like this one could get buried. Here's what you need to know:

IBM now is #1 in the nonclustered TPC-H 1TB benchmark.(1)

TPC-H results are few and far between. So this is an important one to note, especially because it's an outstanding POWER7 proof point.

The IBM Power 780 result is over 2.3 times the performance per core of the HP Integrity Superdome 2 with Oracle result and over 2.7 times the performance per core of the Oracle Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 with Oracle result. And the price performance of the IBM result is considerably less expensive.(1)

Sometimes you just have to dig through the snow mounds to find the newspaper.

Today I had to access the internet. Without an existing internet connection. So I did what I used to do for many years. I dialed in.

Which worked OK. Yes, a bit slow. Yes, I had to wait what seemed like forever for an email to be sent. But it worked.

But would you choose to dial in if you didn't actually have to even if you could?

Which is the same question I have about the SAP BI benchmarks. Oracle recently made claims on a Fujitsu server with the new "Nehalem-EX" processor. The benchmark used was the SAP BI Data Mart benchmark. The data mart scenario is one use of the Business Intelligence capabilities of SAP NetWeaver. The data mart contains a static snapshot of operational data. Multiple users run queries on this data in 10 InfoCubes which contain 2,500,000,000 records. IBM last published on this benchmark in 2008.

The newer and more sophisticated SAP BI benchmark is the SAP BI MXL benchmark where IBM recently published leadership POWER7 results. The mixed load scenario also demonstrates the Business Intelligence capabilities of SAP NetWeaver. In this scenario however, query activity and load/update activity are executed in parallel. Multiple users run queries on data in 10 SD InfoCubes using the following size categories for the initial data load: 300 million records or 1000 million records or 3000 million records. In three phases during high load activity, static operational data is extended with delta data.

Why would you choose to demonstrate leadership with your software on a brand new processor with a less sophisticated and intensive benchmark? When the results can not be compared with POWER7 results? Would you choose to dial in if you didn't have to?

************************************************

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all
over the world.

Walking the dog this week, you felt that spring was in the air. The boots with crampons were put back in the closet. The sun on my face, I could almost imagine reading in my beach chair. And my black lab found grass and dirt mounds, instead of making yellow spots in the white snow.

Yet I just found out this afternoon that besides our flood warning now in effect, a new weather development has formed. A winter storm watch has now turned into a full winter storm warning. With 10 inches or more snow expected. As I write, I see the rain turning to icy chunks. And all I feel like saying is wow, I don't know if I can take any more.

Which is sort of how I felt today when I saw the new #1 IBM SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) 2-tier 16-core result.(1) I mean, IBM already has the top three results in this Unicode benchmark using POWER7 systems.(2) And the highest x86 result, with the IBM x3850 X5.(3) And now we have another outstanding proof point with DB2 on the IBM Power 730, a high-performance, dense and energy-efficient server ideal for running multiple application and infrastructure workloads.

My dog's coat is so plush that we sometimes call him Steiff. Sometimes we even find him stretched out, just relaxing, in a pile of snow.

SAP, mySAP and other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all
over the world.

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.